by Jan Carson
The Treatment Room, with its floor-to-ceiling mirrors and its muttering robot voice, was terrifying enough for Malcolm Orange. When the floor began to circulate beneath his feet, his bowels flipped and the curdling remnants of the previous evening’s Coronas made a bid for daylight. Clapping a cautionary hand across his mouth, Malcolm Orange tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to forget all he’d ever learned about centrifugal force. (Over the years Scientific Investigative Research had introduced Malcolm Orange to a number of troubling concepts best forgotten by a young man nervous enough to hyperventilate over the distant possibility of a panic attack. With varying degrees of success Malcolm had forced himself amnesiac on the subjects of Global Warming, Nuclear Warfare and the whole worrying world of spontaneous combustion. There were enough imagined terrors in the world without allowing the kingdom of science to turn on him. Some lessons, Malcolm Orange firmly believed, were best left unlearned.)
Amnesia wasn’t working for Malcolm Orange this afternoon. The fear of decanting into solid, liquid and noxious gas gripped him harder and faster with each round of the Treatment Room. Whilst he fought the desire to flee in pursuit of some place more static, concern for Cunningham Holt kept his feet bolted to the pivoting ground. His stomach churned, his head conjured up image after rebellious image of faceless human bodies, exploding under pressure, his sinus cavity screamed in reproach, and yet Malcolm could not abandon his friend. This was a first for Malcolm Orange. Selfish to the core, he could not recall a single instance in the last eleven years where he had willingly put his own comfort aside for another. It was a cut and shut kind of feeling. His insides hurt. His outsides ached. His heart was light as cotton candy.
Forgotten, disappeared, soon to be separated into all the composite elements of an eleven-year-old boy, Malcolm Orange sacrificed himself to the greater good. Planting his feet on either side of Cunningham’s wheelchair, he settled in for the duration.
‘I won’t let you sink, Cunningham,’ he repeated, as much for his own benefit as the old man’s.
Weariness overwhelmed him. He felt, for the first time, so much older than his eleven small years.
For three full minutes Malcolm Orange spun slowly round the Treatment Room, acting as a pint-sized prop for Cunningham Holt. Arms full of heavy responsibility, Malcolm had no concern for, nor way of protecting his ears from, the Treatment. The piped voices rolled over his head and shoulders. They burrowed, in tremulous blasts, deep into his invisible skull, where the idea of Malcolm Orange had not yet been fully extinguished. Without consent or comprehension the Director’s Treatment began to appeal to Malcolm’s resolve. Young and not yet lumbered with the world-weary acquiescence of the Delusional, Malcolm was a perfect candidate for the Treatment. Within minutes he began to respond to the truth as it blared mercilessly over his perforations. Cells and sinews, already inclined to dissolve, began to remember their true birth born purpose. Skin stretched to meet the moment, rolling across his torso like newly pressed paper; innocent and unblemished. The tiniest twist in his DNA perked its almost evaporated ear and heard the rallying call. ‘WISE UP!’
Something unperceivable had shifted in the churning cavern of Malcolm Orange’s guts. The mysterious trigger responsible for his disappearance flipped in timely agreement and right there on the pivoting floor of the Treatment Room, Malcolm Orange quit disappearing and prepared to return.
His arms came first. This was particularly fortunate, for the full weight of Cunningham Holt – growing heavier with each revolution – rested in the crooks of Malcolm’s elbows. Face came next, revealing a look of such grim determination that his mother, staring intently from behind the protective screen, started in shock, losing two inches of hard-won air, so her head no longer challenged the ceiling tiles. Chest, legs, fingers, feet all began to drizzle back into focus, still inconclusive as afternoon fog, yet offering up a basic outline of an eleven-year-old boy. From the other side of the room, Martha Orange watched her son materialize before her astonished eyes. The effect was decidedly unsettling for it provoked in her the disturbing realization that she could not pinpoint with any precision the last time she’d actually noticed her oldest son. The guilt was an avalanche. By the time Malcolm had a middle, his mother had disentangled herself from the spaghetti soup of wires and leads which sprouted from the Director’s machine and, with no thought for her own safety, dashed across the Treatment Room to join Malcolm and Cunningham.
It would be weeks, almost a month, before the last perforation sealed over and Malcolm felt confident enough to bathe without the protection of Band-Aids. However, full recovery, once instigated, was a foregone conclusion. Later, as Malcolm recollected the final moments of his disappearance, he would wonder what strange medicine he’d been exposed to. By the time the sun was drooping like a damp, poached egg over the Baptist Retirement Village, his holes had already begun to seal over. They scabbed quickly and peeled off under the insistence of an eager fingernail, revealing a body coated in clean, pink baby skin, uninterrupted by perforation or scar.
Over the weeks to come Malcolm Orange employed every facet of Scientific Investigative Research to make sense of the comings and recent goings of his body. A series of graphs and bar charts, coupled with the remnants of the Director’s research (swiped by Soren from the fireplace in her father’s study mere minutes before the police arrived), offered a rudimentary medical explanation for Malcolm’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance. However, Scientific Investigative Research had no way of explaining why the emptiness inside Malcolm’s head had all of a sudden, without permission or ceremony, sealed up. For eleven years, almost twelve, he’d carried a cavern in the pit of his belly; a sadness so universal it could not be filled with people, places or pastrami and banana sandwiches. In the weeks to come the emptiness would evaporate out of Malcolm, leaving not so much as a fingerprint outline of its memory. Malcolm Orange would settle quietly into himself so he no longer missed his father; no longer felt like an abandoned room each time he looked at his mother; no longer wished, with late night tears and cursing, that the Jesus God would uninvent dying before the members of the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs got any older.
All these understandings would come later. As he stood in the Treatment Room pivoting gracefully, Malcolm Orange was so preoccupied with Cunningham Holt he barely noticed the color creeping back into the space where his arms had been. Malcolm Orange was beside himself with concern for his friend. The Treatment was too much for Cunningham Holt. The truth seemed to be dragging him down. Malcolm could have sworn his friend grew heavier with every cruel revolution. Though the floor remained reassuringly solid underfoot he was utterly convinced that Cunningham was beginning to sink. Malcolm’s hesitating arms were no match for the weight of truth bleating from the speakers. By the fourth or fifth minute of Treatment he could barely hold his friend up. Unsure what to do next, Malcolm fell back on instinct. With every frantic blast of the Director’s treatment, he leaned into Cunningham’s ear and muttered his own two-cent take on the truth.
‘I won’t let you sink.’
‘You are the bravest person I’ve ever met.’
‘I wish you were my real grandpa.’
And, when the weight of death began to drive the honest-to-God, hard to tell truths right out of Malcolm Orange’s still absent insides, ‘I’m sorry I lied about the X-Files.’ And, ‘I wish my dad got shot instead of you.’ And a further fifteen times in quick succession with barely room to draw breath, ‘I won’t let you sink.’
Buoyed by these kinder truths, Cunningham Holt appeared to grow lighter in his arms. A space of some three inches had appeared between the old man’s heels and the linoleum floor. Malcolm pulled all the harder against the sinking, continuing his liturgy with renewed fervor. His resolve strengthened as Cunningham rose gently in his arms. Malcolm held tightly for every one of the elderly grandparents he’d left like signposts from the east coast to the west. He held for absent fathers and stolen tires, for every rusted
bicycle sacrificed to the open road, for friends, flighty mothers and all the damn fool things the Jesus God had thought fit to wrestle from his grasp. ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ he prayed in a direct parody of his final grandmother and, through gritted teeth, added his own epitaph, ‘the Lord better not taketh Cunningham Holt.’
Miracles followed. For the first time in years the Jesus God seemed to be listening. Malcolm Orange could feel his holy, bleeding hands as they lifted the weight from his own. The hairs rose on the back of his perforated arms. He felt charged with fear and static electricity. Malcolm had never expected the Jesus God to turn up in person and though this was just the sort of miracle he’d always hoped for, he took great care to avert his eyes for fear of being struck down on the spot. Past disappointments were instantly forgotten as the Jesus God finally redeemed himself for all his jealous takings. It was only when his mother’s voice rose to meet his own, muttering something soft and Spanish, that Malcolm Orange noticed her hands and the gnarly hands of Nate Grubbs each holding up a corner of Cunningham Holt. The Jesus God had once again deferred responsibility to human hands. Malcolm was unsure if this counted for a miracle in the traditional sense.
While Nate Grubbs, Malcolm and his mother stood in the centre of the Treatment Room, bearing the weight of Cunningham Holt, Roger Heinz slipped through the door, down the padded corridors of the Center and into the parking lot, where he quickly rounded up the remaining members of the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs.
‘What the hell?’ cried Bill, as Roger Heinz came puffing towards them, protective headphones still balancing buggishly on his balding head.
‘Cunningham needs us,’ panted Roger Heinz. ‘We got to go to the Treatment Room now!’
‘That’s not part of the plan,’ interrupted Bill, who had, over the course of the afternoon, begun to settle into the role of leader and was not about to pass the baton on to Roger Heinz without some kind of fight. ‘I’ve been appointed leader of the Primary Unit. I make the decisions and I’m not sure about this. It doesn’t sound safe.’
‘Suit yourself, Bill. Who’s coming with me and who’s staying with old play-it-safe-Billy here?’
Bill was just removing his hands from his pockets in anticipation of placing them firmly on his waist in a stance of resolute defiance when he noticed that Irene was already halfway across the parking lot. Sensing the last small jot of authority about to slip free of his grasp, he turned to face the remaining members of the Primary Unit and, in his most manly voice announced, ‘On second thoughts I really think we should head over to the Treatment Room. Cunningham needs us.’
(Bill would not be required to lead anyone or anything for the better part of a decade. When, in the summer of her eighty-fifth year, Irene passed away, mistaking in her mind-addled confusion the furniture polish for her nightly glass of vermouth, Bill would be forced to step up to the plate, planning funerals, executing wills and leading his wife’s funeral procession from the sanctuary of the Baptist Church they’d once attended to the municipal graveyard on the edge of town. When the occasion arose and he found himself more than capable of taking the lead, Bill would have to wonder if Irene had been holding him back all along.)
As the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs gathered around Cunningham Holt, the four corners of the Treatment Room slowly filled up with cardigans and walking sticks and the overpowering scent of Yardley soap. The Director urged caution (shouting to be heard over the Treatment which, forced far beyond the recommended level, had jammed and could not be overridden or switched off). The Treatment had never been administered to multiple patients simultaneously. Though he did not give a half-hearted damn about his patients’ wellbeing, the Director could not be sure how the Treatment would affect the People’s Committee. Fearing a second career-crunching lawsuit, he slipped out the door and spent the next half hour chucking a lifetime’s worth of research into the fireplace in his study. The police, when they arrived, found him, gas can in hand, attempting to set the Center on fire. They arrested Trip Blue on the spot for arson and the attempted murder of the staff and patients who’d just been shuffled, somewhat dazed, back to their beds and armchairs.
In the Treatment Room the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs ignored the noise emanating from the wall-mounted speakers. Over one thousand years of combined experience had taught them how to disregard the kind of distractions – arthritis, income tax and petulant grandchildren, for example – that always seemed to get in the way of the important stuff. Shuffling into a wide circle, they stretched their arms out and, each grabbing an ankle, an ear or shirtsleeve, managed to lift Cunningham Holt three clean feet off the ground.
‘We’ve got you, old chap,’ barked Roger Heinz, struggling to hold back an uncharacteristic flood of tears. ‘You’re not sinking on our watch.’
A careful smile crept across Cunningham Holt’s face. He closed his empty eyes and for the first time in over sixty years allowed himself to rest, secure in the knowledge that he would not sink. With his very last breaths he permitted himself a moment of overleaping ambition, imagining his final moments bound not to the greedy depths but rather the heights and hopes of the open sky.
‘Sing to me,’ he whispered, and the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs unanimously agreed that this was the very least they could do.
‘Ladies and gents,’ Nate Grubbs began, his voice thick with gravitas, ‘You heard Cunningham. Ignore the nonsense coming out of the walls. Let’s send our friend off with something worth remembering. Forget about the songs you’ve practiced. Just open your mouths and sing all those songs you really can’t forget. And if you can only manage to remember one song, then for God’s sake make sure it’s a good one. Lock the door, Bill. We’re young. We’ve got all night if needs be. Let’s start with Roger and move round the circle.’
Roger Heinz leaned forward, his arms forming a cantilever bridge where they met Cunningham Holt’s. He cleared his throat and opened proceedings with the theme from the Phantom of the Opera, perfectly delivered. Once finished, Bill, marking time with a series of erratic hip thrusts, launched into a jaunty version of ‘Night Fever’. Inspired by the cut of her husband’s frisky pelvis, Irene attempted ‘Bat out of Hell’ and several of Diana Ross’s more popular numbers. As they sang, the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs grew in confidence. This, they realized, was what they’d been practicing for all along. Stirred by the music, non-members added their voices to the chorus. Mr Fluff forgot herself and, because a lifetime of hacking hairballs meant that rapping now came easier than singing, contributed a trilogy of Beastie Boys tunes. Martha Orange warbled her way through what appeared to be a Spanish version of ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’, weeping openly as she struggled to reach the low notes. Clary O’Hare volunteered some Kraftwerk in Morse code. It worked, and, bolstered by the group’s enthusiasm, he managed to tip tap his way through a believable version of ‘Love in an Elevator’.
‘That’s seventy-three,’ counted Nate Grubbs, and checking Cunningham’s face for signs of recovery or distress found the old man still alive and smiling the effervescent grin of a homecoming queen. ‘Let’s keep the ball rolling.’
Mrs Hunter Huxley, and by proxy Mrs George Kellerman, took the floor and led the People’s Committee in a rousing chorus of revival songs. Tongues unloosed and arms aloft, the Spirit descended, raising Cunningham Holt a further foot towards the ceiling. All those present got saved, some for the first time, and some for the second or third occasion of the evening. Suddenly full of conviction, Soren James Blue surrendered the last ounce of her cynicism and, unleashing a surprisingly sweet voice, offered ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Born in the USA’. This brought the collection up to two hundred and thirty something, and with the Lion King soundtrack itching at his elbows, Malcolm Orange opened his mouth and contributed almost two dozen individual Elton John songs.
The sun was beginning to descend by the time the baton arrived at Nate Grubbs’ feet.
Several of the older members had fallen asleep and stood slightly inclined, yet still holding tightly to the edges of Cunningham Holt’s shirt. As always, Nate Grubbs approached the moment methodically and with tremendous charm. Adjusting the legs of his trousers, he cleared his throat once, twice, three times and delivered five hundred and three bona-fide, note-perfect, Bob Dylan songs. (It should be noted that there were, at the time, only five hundred Bob Dylan songs in existence. However, as he sang, Mr Wilson unconsciously composed three new Dylan songs which would later find their way into the great man’s dreams, itching there until his guitar-playing fingers finally capitulated and weaved them into existence.)
As the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs sang their elderly hearts out, Malcolm Orange began to notice something odd. All across the Treatment Room his friends were experiencing a subtle yet marked transformation. If Scientific Investigative Research had not given him a coolly logical mind, Malcolm Orange would have sworn that his friends were younger than they’d been two hours previously. The reality fell closer to fiction than Malcolm could have imagined. Trapped and open-eared, his friends were powerless to resist the Treatment. They could not help but hear every word escaping from the speaker system. Within seconds the words were at work. Within minutes they had infected the entire room with a double dose of blinding realism. Inspired by the gracious truths flying around, Committee members long resigned to a muted kind of existence were encountering the boldest versions of themselves and responding in kind. And while it was impossible to tell if responsibility lay with the Director’s Treatment or the unleashed power of communal song, Malcolm Orange was forced to acknowledge that the People’s Committee for Remembering Songs appeared to be getting healed right under his nose.
